Mahindra XUV500 : Test Drive & Review

This is a discussion on Mahindra XUV500 : Test Drive & Review within Official New Car Reviews, part of the Team-BHP Reviews category; guys who booked W8 AWD, has anyone got a expected date of delivery from M&M?
My Bil booked Volcano Black ...

guys who booked W8 AWD, has anyone got a expected date of delivery from M&M?
My Bil booked Volcano Black W8 AWD model on 3rd october at sireesh auto Bangalore and was told that M&M will confirm booking withing 48 hours and expected date of delivery but now even after 12 days we have not received any intimation from M&M. On calling their helpline we were informed that M&M has not been able to sort through the huge number of bookings and AWD model has 6 months waiting and if we change our choice to E8 2WD then we can get out XUV before 6 months
Would love to know how many AWDs have been booked out of the total no of 8000 XUVs bookings. Why is M&M trying to discourage people from the AWD model? Is it because the profit margins are substantially lesser in the AWD model

Barging in to share my Scorpio ownership experience vis a vis the Company & A.S.S. (inline in bold). For more details you can check my posts in the Scorpio Issues and Solutions Thread

What you've described is very similar to what I have experienced with Chevrolet too. There have been issues that I've reported that were not fixed because they had no clue what I was talking about. Apparently "ignore it and it will go away" seems to work for some customers. I've also had to approach the higher management at GM so much that it became a regular "visit service centre And send an email to GM". It works, but can get pretty frustrating over time, and one tends to get put off by the rigamarole.

What a brilliant review manson of an even better car
Looking at the interiors it doesn't feel like a mahindra at all , heck its much better than an endeavours or a fortuners interiors as well .
It surely will change the game .
Though i prefer the looks of an aria but the XUV 5OO is just a more complete package and that is all that matters when it comes down to the Indian customers .

Nah i dont see it either , i picked up the brochure as well a few days after the launch and i saw these images and was not able to draw out the inspiration - what does look similar in the brochure is the page which has the shot of the door handles and the paws together - that i can relate to!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warhound

Here, Right from the mahindra brochure. Look at the unedited pic, its not hard to notice their "inspiration" especially the whiskers.

Due to the excessive time I spend on the road each day (approximately 4 hours) I have seen just about every car sold in India stranded at some point. Besides, did you check with the owner how old the car was, how many kms etc? For all you know it must have been a flat tire which must have caused them to pull over. Or the owners could have been ignorant enough to not have their cars serviced for a year or more.
My point is lets not get too presumptious about things without giving it enough thought.
To counter your remark, I am currently on my third Scorpio in 7 years and close to 1,75,000 between the three of them and the only breakdown I've faced was on my first Scorpio in the fourth year of ownership at 89,000 kms due to a blown cut out. Wait, I also had a brake booster failure on the same Scorpio, but that was within my building and I wasn't major affected as such.

Quote:

Originally Posted by parsh

At lenghts I had not been able to service my Innova for a year and still had seen that it did not halt me on road anytime running into the end of 6th year now without any issues till date.

Not servicing a car which presumably does considerable running may not cause breakdowns, but you can be rest assured it will take its toll on the internals which would start to reflect in terms of poor fuel efficiency, coarse power delivery, malfunctioning cooling system, e.t.c. irrespective of it being even a Toyota.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mxx

@Manson:
I am asking these questions as to you as you have already owned a few Mahindra vehicles. This will also help prospective xuv buyers.
1) About A.S.S
What is your opinion regarding mahindra a.s.s. I am not asking about providing customers with coffee or tv in waiting room. But, about workmanship, how do they go about the work on vehicles. Do they effectively solve problems? Have you faced unnecessary delays etc. ?

Workmanship at Mahindra at both service centres that I have been to has been week and does not match the enthusiasm expressed by them whilst preparing the job card. I have very often left the Mahindra workshop disheartened.
To give you an idea, the only break down that i pointed out in my last post took place within a couple of hundred kms of a service that cost me in the range of 30K. Their bad was that they replaced all the 'could have been repaired parts' and forgot to check on battery water level.
On the flipside though, the senior management at Mahindra is VERY proactive and I have been nearly satisfied ever since I reported my issues to the GM.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mxx

2) About Mahindra the manufacturer/company
How fast or effectively does mahindra go about addressing/rectifiying known issues(ie niggles, or slightly bigger problems)?

The lower management is rather lethargic and you will have to be rather patient with expressing your issues and problems time and again.
As rightly pointed out by m_upreti, the top managment at Mahindra has a very customer stand and things begin to fall into place rather swiftly once in their knowledge.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mxx

For example, you mentioned sensor issues on vlx. Once this issue surfaced, where these rectified in the subsequent batches of newly delivered scorpios? If so, approximately how many months did it take for mahindra to solve the problem?

I fortunately/unfortunately (you decide) won't be able to answer that as I opted for the SLE variant devoid of any fancy electronic gadgets both the times I had an option to go for the VLX.

So here are 24 cars which are up for comparison. I just listed them and do admit that some of the comparisons would be no brainers. But then, it might help someone who is in the look out for that particular car (say the Fluence).

Please take it away from here.

Last edited by Amartya : 17th October 2011 at 09:15.
Reason: Edited the post to reflect "not" having a separate thread. We'll see how this goes and then if required open up a new thread.

Due to the excessive time I spend on the road each day (approximately 4 hours) I have seen just about every car sold in India stranded at some point. Besides, did you check with the owner how old the car was, how many kms etc? For all you know it must have been a flat tire which must have caused them to pull over. Or the owners could have been ignorant enough to not have their cars serviced for a year or more.
My point is lets not get too presumptious about things without giving it enough thought.
To counter your remark, I am currently on my third Scorpio in 7 years and close to 1,75,000 between the three of them and the only breakdown I've faced was on my first Scorpio in the fourth year of ownership at 89,000 kms due to a blown cut out. Wait, I also had a brake booster failure on the same Scorpio, but that was within my building and I wasn't major affected as such.

Not servicing a car which presumably does considerable running may not cause breakdowns, but you can be rest assured it will take its toll on the internals which would start to reflect in terms of poor fuel efficiency, coarse power delivery, malfunctioning cooling system, e.t.c. irrespective of it being even a Toyota.

Thanks for your response Manson. I understand what you are trying to say.

Surely I can put some logical guesses when a car gets stranded on road with the bonnet open and people figdeting with the internals. It so happened since morning for me to see not 1 but 2 of the scorps. And I have seen quite some till date on road but not many Toyotas and not with bonnet open, though surely with flat tyres.

Not that Scorps are bad cars, in fact being the most sold out SUVs in India beating Safari on sales, right after Bolero, and with proper upkeep would be charm for years down the line, a friend of mine one such. I am sure there are many on our forum who would vouch for the same. I am sure you must be one of them too.

My Innova not getting serviced for a year was a one of time due to certain circumstances, otherwise it gets regularly serviced in its service periods. Yet, there hasn't been till date a situation that I will feel unsafe anywhere let alone in my own campus that the car would not start or stall on road, except when my original battery died in June 2011 while I was in Pune and it was stranded in our compound. The Toyota breakdown helped immediately to replace the battery. But then that was it.

The situaton remains that how reliable a vehicle Mahindra produces against the competition and how does it live up to its reputation and atleast at XUV level when it touts as Global SUV does it live upto it, is something to be seen. It is definitely a value proposition given all the features and the power/torque statistics.

Let me also tell you that one of friend who was hooked onto Scorpio and then got disheartened experiencing its thrills (shrills rather on braking and highway high speed mannerisms in Goa in his recent trip) was about to cancel his Scorp booking and I pursuaded him to look at XUV and convert to it instead and now he will soon be getting one in hand in a couple of days.

Here, Right from the mahindra brochure. Look at the unedited pic, its not hard to notice their "inspiration" especially the whiskers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warhound

Lol, you guys have NOOOO imagination. HOW CAN you NOT see the WHISKERS !!! its sooooo in your face !

dude..... it has nothing to do with imagination, i can imagine several things out of clouds in the sky . if one tries hard, they can always find some similarities.

as far as whiskers(and other featured pointed out by you) are considered, the cheetah is not the only cat in our ecosystem blessed with it. My simple contention is that when you look at it from the front, it does not look like a cheetah. They say "jaw like front grill" when the cheetah's jaw is so narrow, unlike the super wide front. Neither can i see "pouncing Cheetah-Inspired body lines"

i mean it is hilarious when you compare an SUV(supposed to be huge and bulky off-road vehicle) to a lean, thin, built for speed cheetah. It is just a PR gimmick done by the marketing department to attract customers rather than the design team leaning on the cheetah for inspiration.

Im not contesting what you are saying reagarding it looking ugly. The cheetah look is HIDEOUS. but there is no other explanation for it having that sort of a front grill/bumper with those wierd body lines.

And if you ask why cheetah and not anyone else ?! the lead designer went to kenya on a safari to draw inspiration and came up with this ! apparently all she spotted was a cheetah im not kidding !

guys who booked W8 AWD, has anyone got a expected date of delivery from M&M?
My Bil booked Volcano Black W8 AWD model on 3rd october at sireesh auto Bangalore and was told that M&M will confirm booking withing 48 hours and expected date of delivery but now even after 12 days we have not received any intimation from M&M. On calling their helpline we were informed that M&M has not been able to sort through the huge number of bookings and AWD model has 6 months waiting and if we change our choice to E8 2WD then we can get out XUV before 6 months
Would love to know how many AWDs have been booked out of the total no of 8000 XUVs bookings. Why is M&M trying to discourage people from the AWD model? Is it because the profit margins are substantially lesser in the AWD model

I have booked the Volcano black W8 AWD on 30th Sept at gurgaon and got a confirmation call on the (IIRC) 7th of Oct stating that my booking date is 4th Oct and tentative delivery date is 11th Dec 2011. However I have not received any email confirmation with the SAP screen shot.
I have written to the customer care that my booking date was 30th Sept and not 4th Oct along with the details of the booking receipt issued by the dealer etc, however I haven't got a satisfactory revert yet!!!
Cheers

XUV has certainly created a new segment and can lure customers looking for C segment sedans into buying an XUV. And at the same time, its the most VFM buy among its closest competitors i.e. aria, yeti etc

It ll not be strange if those looking initially for a captiva, outlander or a fortuner also have a look at XUV considering the amount of features it incorporates.